Like
my colleagues here on the panel, I will be dealing with problems of counting
the Viet Cong forces on the battlefield.However, I will be treating the issue before those enemy soldiers became
part of anyone's body count.So, if you
will bear with me, I will bring the enemy back to life, so to speak, and
explore problems encountered by the South Vietnamese and Americans in trying to
count them.

In
the spring of 1968, immediately after the Communists' Tet Offensive, General
William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, requested 205,000 more
American troops on top of the nearly half million already in country.The request became controversial among
policy makers, members of Congress, and the American people, in part because it
implied that previous estimates of enemy strength, and thus estimates of the
number of U.S. and South Vietnamese troops needed to defeat them, had suddenly
become invalid.The controversy

over
troop strength did not go away quietly.Instead, it festered for years, climaxing in a very American
spectacle:a media circus trial
featuring platoons of lawyers and commentators debating allegations of numbers
crunching and conspiracies to mislead.

The
contention that surfaced in 1968 over how many American troops would be needed
to defeat the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies was not the
unexpected appearance of a new problem relating to enemy forces.It was, instead, the flip side of the older
problem of counting the enemy.Put
simply, before a commander can determine how many troops he will need to defeat
an enemy force, he must have a good idea of how many troops the enemy has.The number and type of troops which each
side has is referred to as the ORDER OF BATTLE.The contending commanders in modern warfare have on their
headquarters staffs order of battle specialists.It is the job of such specialists to study the other side and make
an educated guess about the enemy's order of battle, and then keep their own
commander informed of any changes they detect.Based on the decision of his order of battle specialists, a commander
decides how many troops he needs to send into the field.

Order
of battle specialists have a number of sources of information about the other
side.These include enemy casualty
totals, whenever they can be determined after battles; interrogations of
captured enemy; and translations of captured documents relating to recruiting
campaigns and training facilities.During the Vietnam War other types of documentation were also useful to
order of battle specialists:records of
grain storage and equipment and weapons distribution along the Ho Chi Minh
Trail, since these would indicate how many fresh troops were approaching the
southern battlefields.The processes by
which order of battle specialists operate seem logical and reliable.They investigate the same categories of
information, and they count the same types of evidence.In fact, however, because the estimating
process involves interpretations often arrived at independently, two groups may
arrive at substantially different numbers for an enemy's order of battle.

Differences
of interpretation and calculation caused South Vietnamese and Americans to
reach different estimates of the Viet Cong order of battle.From 1961 through 1965 the South Vietnamese
consistently estimated that the Viet Cong had between 2,000 and 7,000 more men
than the Americans estimated.[1]

These
differing estimates of enemy strength went

unreconciled
for years because of several factors.For one,

the
South Vietnamese and Americans placed enemy troops in different
categories.The South Vietnamese
recognized five types of enemy soldiers:a Regimental Headquarters cadre, a Battalion, a Mobile Company, a Local
Company, and a Local Platoon.The
Americans, however, recognized only four of those categories, and they used
different terminology for two of them.The term ”separate” indicated that a unit was not permanently assigned
to the same battalion, and it could be deployed across district or provincial
boundaries.To the South Vietnamese,
the term ”mobile” implied the same flexibility of deployment.

Second,
the two national armies decided on their own how many men the Viet Cong
enrolled in their units.For most
armies, the question of how many men are in each unit--that is, the issue of
force structure--is a very standardized one.For the Viet Cong, however, the issue depended on the recruiting
potential of each region, province, and district.In some areas the insurgent recruiters found a receptive
population.In others they met with
resistance.The result was that in
different districts, for example, a local company could vary in strength
between 50 and 100, and in different provinces a battalion could vary between
300 and 600 men.In addition, depending
on how often the local company had been called upon to join a field operation,
its strength might be further reduced by illness and casualties.After interrogating the same prisoners of
war, it was possible for South Vietnamese and Americans to disagree on the
strength of the same Viet Cong unit.

Third,
the South Vietnamese and Americans issued their own estimates of the enemy order
of battle separately each quarter, even though they held frequent meetings
about order of battle developments, and often shared captured documents and
sometimes jointly interviewed prisoners.

Finally,
since the relationship between South Vietnamese and Americans was officially a
partnership of equals, neither side could order the other to adopt its
interpretations of evidence and estimates.

In
one respect the American side of the partnership contributed to the difficulty
of agreeing on the Viet Cong order of battle.In October 1963, MACV changed its terms of calculation for the strength
of enemy units.Before the change, MACV
assumed a strength of 100 for a Viet Cong company, and 30 for a platoon.After the change, the Americans assumed no
standard strengths for enemy units but based all estimates on prisoner
interrogations or captured documents.[2]

The
persistence of these different estimates of Viet Cong strength were frustrating
to Americans in the MACV order of battle section.But there was something about the South Vietnamese that was even
more irritating.They allowed
themselves to be stampeded by the Viet Cong into making radical short term
adjustments to order of battle estimates.Specifically, whenever the enemy mounted an unusually successful
operation, the South Vietnamese dramatically increased their estimate of enemy
strength.

One
such example occurred in September 1961.On the night of the 17th-18th, an estimated three enemy battalions
attacked Phuoc Vinh, the capital of Phuoc Thanh Province, just 35 miles north
of Saigon.In a well-organized
operation, the Viet Cong overran and occupied the capital city for several
hours.During that time, they assembled
the townspeople to witness show trials of local officials, and then executed the
province chief, his assistant, and two other persons before the horrified
populace.

In
the wake of this event, which was the first time the Viet Cong had taken over a
provincial capital, South Vietnamese military officials concluded that there
must be many more Viet Cong in their country than they had thought.They quickly increased their estimate of
enemy strength from about 22,000 before the attack to 41,000 after.[3]

A
second unusually alarmist estimate occurred just five months later, in response
to an enemy action 350 miles north of Saigon in Quang Nam Province.On the night of 27 February 1962, a Viet
Cong battalion attacked the Hau Duc District Capital west of DaNang.After killing or capturing the entire local
militia company defending the capital, the Viet Cong occupied the town for
three days.This was the first time a
district capital in the northern-most I Corps Tactical Zone had been taken over
by an enemy force.While fighting their
way toward the capital, government troops were ambushed several times and, in
the end, absorbed more casualties than the Viet Cong.

After
this enemy success, the South Vietnamese were convinced that the attack must
have been preceded by a massive infiltration of enemy troops.Accordingly, they increased their estimate
of enemy strength from 26,100 before the attack to 46,000 after.[4]

An
even more alarmist adjustment of the enemy order of battle followed a flurry of
Viet Cong attacks the first week of February 1964.In a remarkable demonstration of planning and coordination, the
Viet Cong mounted a series of six battalion-size attacks in three provinces in
the Mekong Delta over a period of three days.In the largest attack, which took place 45 miles northwest of Saigon,
insurgents killed at least 94 South Vietnamese troops and possibly as many as
114, depending on various reports, and wounded another 32 from a relief
force.Convinced that these attacks
indicated a dramatic inflow of enemy forces from Cambodia, the South Vietnamese
increased their estimate of insurgent strength from just over 34,000 to
147,000.[5]

The
Americans could do little to counter these alarmist estimates of Viet Cong
strength.American advisers had been
serving at each echelon of the South Vietnamese command structure for years.But advisers could not command; they could
only instruct and hope that their counterparts accepted and used their
techniques and criteria of interpretation.In March of 1965 the South Vietnamese raised the hopes of American order
of battle specialists that the problem of different estimates might be solved
by agreeing to the joint publication of estimates.However, as soon as the first joint estimate was distributed it
was clear that joint publication was not the answer.The South Vietnamese insisted that their figures on the enemy
were valid, and while they understood the process by which the Americans
operated, they still believed that policy makers and field commanders would
benefit from an awareness of the statistical range that came out of the
application of the same basic methodology.As a result, the gap in estimates persisted.

The
inability of South Vietnamese and American order of battle specialists to agree
on their estimates in the period 1961 to 1965 posed only minor problems to
field commanders during that time.But
when American combat forces were deployed to Vietnam in mid-1965, the potential
for major problems arising increased markedly.Within three years the potential became real, and General Westmoreland
found himself confronting a skeptical and hostile audience of office holders
and citizens in the United States as he sought to finalize what appeared to him
a knockout blow against the Viet Cong.

[1].
Report, Maj. Paul E. Suplizio, subject: A
Study of the Military Support of Pacification in South Vietnam, April
1964-April 1965, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth,
1966, Chap. 4.

[2].
Memo, Director, Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, Department of State, for the Secretary of State, 8 Nov 63, sub: JCS
Comments on Department of State Research Memorandum RFE-90, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vietnam, 4:583.